Domains With Trademarks In Them: Not A Great Idea

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Well, what I want to say is pretty simple: If you are thinking of buying a domain name with a trademark in it, my advice is to NOT do it. There are many examples of exceptions to the rule, but it's just safer not to. Remember, there are many examples of someone getting into big trouble (or small trouble) because of trademark and copyright infringement.

For example, ME!

As usual, I found this out the hard way. I currently own a few domains with trademarks in them. I bought them in my first year of doing affiliate marketing, and just didn't think about anything of it. The registrar allowed me to buy it, so I shouldn't have any problems, right? Wrong.

In 2015, I was contacted by Facebook about some of these domains which had the name Facebook in them. They said that I had to remove the websites and let the domains expire or face possible legal trouble.

Chances are, it was a bluff. There are thousands of "facebook" themed domains out there, and they can't possibly find them all or take all the owners to court. Especially those outside the USA. Also, they only asked about half of the domains I owned with "facebook" in the title, so they obviously didn't do their homework.

Well, these domains were not making any money for me, so taking them down wasn't a big deal. I did it, and there was no harm done. I haven't heard anything about it from them since.

But think of how much trouble it could have caused!

What if my websites were making money? Yes, I could move them to a new domain name, but it would be a big pain, and I might lose rankings along the way. Plus, I'd have to spend time and money rebranding my website, social media channels, etc.

So, long story short, avoid trouble down the road by not using trademarks in your domain name.

QUESTION: Can I Use Trademarks In My Blog Post Titles?

ANSWER: YES

It's totally fine to have mywebsite.com/trademark-name-blog post. No one can stop you from using their business's name in the title of your post or page. Just the domain name.

Examples of trademarked domain names that seem to operate without consequence

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. How about these domain names that seem to brazenly infringe on big company names?

9to5mac.com

www.hackingnetflix.com

www.androidauthority.com

starbuckssecretmenu.net

Who really knows. Maybe they drive enough traffic to the parent company that they get ignored. Or maybe company has bigger fish to fry at the moment and may take down the site later. I just wouldn't want to risk my business like that!

Rebranding A Trademarked Domain Name Into Something New

If you currently have a trademarked name in your domain name, you may want to consider rebranding early on. You don't have to do it, but just be aware of the risks. You can easily "move" your entire website with a single button click using Wealthy Affiliate hosting: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/websites

You can also buy a new domain name directly here in WA as well: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/websites/domains

I hope this helps! This question comes up a lot, so feel free to share this post with someone you think it could help in the future.

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Recent Comments

42

Great info Nathaniell, thank you. I'd better be careful in the future!
Ray

Great information like always, thank you sir.

Thanks for the reminder because I am planning to have one.

Thanks for giving me something to link to. I purchased blogwithwordpress.com before I realized that I couldn't use wordpress as part of the name. But this story has a happy ending, I now have blogwithwp.com which is shorter, and shorter is usually better.

Yeah, I did kind of the same thing for my niche site Marion.
... phooie!
http://ladiesgolfchannel.com -> to -> http://ladiesgolfshoppe.com

Did WordPress have an issue with this? I wondered how "open source" stuff worked, and if you could use the name in the domain, as android.

I actually found it on their website https://wordpress.org/about/domains/ when I was looking for an official logo I could use for my online WordPress course. Android could be different because it was a word before it became an operating system.

Marion, I know this was Nathaniell's question about Android, but would that be generally true? Apples (apple) has been around forever, but I wouldn't think I could use that word - what do you think?
... something like applecore.com for Apple products?

In my names above, golf has been around for hundreds of years so of course that is good; channels too. Yet I was told by some free legal help that it probably is infringement, so I changed.
The Golf Channel has been around for a long time, but there was never a "Ladies Golf Channel" - I still own the name, but not using it.

I'm not a legal eagle so I can't answer that question. I wouldn't want to take risks with a website in case I received a take down order. Those big companies have a lot more clout than us little people.

That's for sure.
... that's why I'm staying away too!

Thanks Marion!

Thank you for the info

Nathaniell, Thanks for the heads up. You always seem to have great info.
Barbara

Thank you for saving me the head ache in the long run... much, much appreciate it ;)...!

Great info from a credible source... good job.

You might think that it is the registrar's requirement to ensure your domain isn't infringing, but you'd actually be wrong (generally, some TLDs use what is called the Trademark Clearing House or TMCA) to provide a quick check if the domain might tread on an existing copyright, but that isn't actually feasible for the registrar to do as there are literally millions of trademarks in hundreds of countries. For that matter, sometimes, the same trademarked work might be valid for more than one trademark, such as the US company Apple Inc and UK's Apple Corps. One is a computer company we're likely all familiar with, while the other is a multimedia corporation owned by the Beatles which in turn contains Apple Records. By trademark alone, which of those companies has the rights to Apple.com then?
Trademark based registrations is a very interesting topic in general though, and is one of the major points for which the UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) was created to handle. Currently, we live in a very interesting time where the UDRP itself is in the process of undergoing a chance to favor the trademark even more heavily though, and so I would advocate staying away from trademarked domains and their misspellings as a registration idea. Sometimes you can be protected under the creative commons, but the UDRP panel actually isn't bound by the Creative Commons legal code (as that is only binding to the US and ICANN, the regulatory board of the internet is by definition multi-national) so that defense may not help you much when push comes to shove. That said, as noted in the initial post, feel free to go hog wild on review posts and anything to the right side of your dot as those are much less costly to fix if called into question, and are generally far harder to pursue anyway outside of DMCA, which only applies if you're hosting actual digital content about the trademark, such as a movie or protected pictures.

I really liked reading your blog. I never thought of this as an issue until now. I, like you, would assume that if I could purchase the domain then there shouldn't be any kind of problem with it. At least you weren't making any kind of significant income on the websites that you took down. That would have been so frustrating. I mean, what a headache it would have been. Sorry you had trouble with Facebook over it but I think it's great that you took that experience and shared it here for others. You are helping to prevent a lot of people from getting into potentially sticky situations. Thanks for sharing : )

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